


Tank

by xbritomartx



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Mao Zedong Thought, Tanks Roll Everyone Dies, stations of canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 06:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17095682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbritomartx/pseuds/xbritomartx
Summary: Taylor triggers in the locker with the ability to turn into an arbitrary number of Soviet tanks. Easily a breaker 9/blaster 5/mover 3/brute 4/changer 8/master 7, our glorious heroine becomes the vanguard of the proletariat and brings about righteous revolution. Escalation, power wank, and stations of canon galore lie within these pages.





	1. Historical Experience is Written in Blood and Iron

_I’m a steamroller, baby_  
_And I’m rolling on down the line_  
_Hell, you better get outta my way now_  
_Before I roll all over you_

Iron and blood.

Taylor Hebert has been shoved in her own locker, trapped within its confines, encased and imprisoned in a cocoon of metal: iron.

She is not alone. Dozens of rotting menstrual products crowd her, and they've been here long enough that hundreds of tiny life forms crowd them, feasting on the very element that pollutes them: blood.

The bugs are a metaphor for Taylor's social status and self-image and quite frankly you're stupid for not noticing that, but they are not a metaphor that is relevant to this story.

As she molders like so many sodden pads, Taylor wishes her school life was not like this. Everybody has a right to a tampon-free educational experience, but she is nonetheless sealed in a coffin of discarded menstrual cups.

This is not Emma’s fault.

Well, it obviously is, but it’s also more broadly the fault of neoliberal capitalism.

Globalization led to widespread economic depression, which led to Winslow being underfunded, which led to underpaid teachers and administrators deferring to the wealthy lawyer Alan Barnes.

Fucking capitalism. She could get rid of Emma, but another Emma would only rise up in her place.

This is the result of a systemic failure.

Suddenly an eldritch crystallized being of gargantuan proportions taps her on the figurative shoulder.

It shows her a utopia where the people care for each other and ensure they can learn and work without fear or oppression or alienation.

_Destination?_

Taylor agrees.

The way is revealed to her: the masses unite behind a column of tanks, which roll forward under a flag the color of the blood they spill.

_Trajectory?_

Taylor agrees.

Then she changes.

Blood and iron.

*

It looks like this: a normal high school hallway, populated by a handful of students--some mutely stunned, some openly amused--gawking at a particular locker. There is a puddle of vomit on the ground in front of this locker.

Then, suddenly, a D-10T2S (for those of you who don’t wish to interrupt your fic-reading experience to google Soviet armament terminology, that’s a tank gun) punches through the locker door. The barrel emerges inch by inch--slowly, painfully, because Taylor is not yet used to turning into a T55A Main Battle Tank.

Yet.

She adapts quickly. The remainder of the tank bursts forth from the wall of lockers, and a few unlucky but doubtlessly counterrevolutionary students are ground beneath her treads. The hallway is destroyed as the tank makes her way to the gymnasium. Remaining students run shrieking away, but more tanks follow them and herd them (as well as all the other students, teachers, and administrators) to the gym, too.

It sounds like this: Taylor explaining, through the screaming whir of a dozen V-55 engines, that the students are now free to simply study instead of being exploited for entertainment by bullies and exploited for labor in group projects.

Then it sounds like self-criticism read in shaky, quavering voices. Even people who were bad elements and rightists this morning can join, provided they confess their crimes and explain what they did wrong in public. It sounds like a struggle session as the freshly liberated students come to terms with the injustices committed against them under the old system.

It feels like this: getting crushed by a tank, if you’re Madison or Greg or Sparky; being forced into the airplane stress position, if you’re Emma or Blackwell or Gladly; turning into a shadow and fleeing, if you’re Sophia. If you’re Taylor, it feels like the world is being put right.

Also, these are _Communist_ tanks, so running over protesting students only makes them happier and more powerful.

It tastes and smells like this: blood and smoke.

*

As far as the Protectorate can make out, the students who were Madison, Greg, and Sparky spontaneously disappeared and the remainder trashed the place in a fit of anti-authoritarian pique. You’d think the scale of destruction would clearly indicate “parahuman intervention,” but the witnesses aren’t talking and the establishment sees what it wants to see.

What it sees is a social problem, and it acts to stamp it out before the teeming hordes of poor Winslow students (I told you the bugs were a metaphor, seriously, this chapter is short, can you not remember 200 lousy words back?) can threaten the privileged students of Arcadia and Immaculata, which are the only other high schools in the entire state of New Hampusetts.

This is all very upsetting to Miss Militia, who is a bougie running dog, and to Armsmaster, who resents achievements made by the masses and not his own self, and to Alan Barnes, whose substance deserves to be eaten, and to the wealthy and powerful in general, because the youth these days are getting out of control and they need control of the youth.

While everyone is being upset, Taylor goes to a hardware store and steals (there being no ethical consumption under capitalism) an ice pick. She goes home and cuts her hair into a bob and dons a Mao suit that was stashed in her mother’s closet. This ensemble will serve as her costume when she is not being a fleet of tanks.


	2. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

After Liberation (Locker) Day, Winslow is aggressively patrolled by both human and parahuman law enforcement. They still don’t understand what happened, but they know they don’t want it to happen again.

Taylor decides to implement the guerrilla tactics perfected by revolutionary hero and well-regarded red, red sun Mao Zedong. The enemy has advanced, so she will retreat. Rather than call attention to herself, she chooses not to use her powers for three months.

She doesn’t mind the delay. She fills those months eating pitas, reading _Triumvirate!_ , and brushing up on her Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. She has time to do all this because the bullying has finally stopped. Everyone is either too dead or too confused to continue their campaign of harassment.

Finally, on April 11, Taylor decides she will go out on patrol in a dangerous area of town. Surely something counterrevolutionary will happen and require her intervention; it is, after all, an American city dominated by superpowered Nazis. She departs with her ice pick, confident that she will not only find danger, but that she will be able to turn into at least one tank at the first sign of it.

*

Meanwhile, certain people are sitting in the Cauldron headquarters.

“Hmm,” Alexandria says, casually conducting human experimentation in her copious amounts of spare time. “Brockton Bay is very interesting.”

“Yes,” Doctor Mother replies, boredly, while Contessa gives her a manicure, boredly. “Brockton Bay is all we ever talk about here. Especially that weird kid at Winslow High School, one of exactly three institutions of higher education in the United States.”

“She can turn into upwards of fifteen thousand tanks at a time,” Contessa says, her power controlling her eyes to make sure they glitter dangerously. She taps the brim of her fedora, which has been surgically fused to her scalp. “Thanks to my overdependence on my power, I don’t actually know what a ‘tank’ is or even how to count, but I’m sure it’s very impressive. The Path, which is how I always refer to my power, says so.”

The Number Man pokes his head in. “I know how to count,” he announces. “See.” He holds up a finger. “One.” He holds up a second finger. “Two.” He looks at his hand, suddenly agonized. “. . . Fifteen thousand,” he says.

“Put some fucking pants on,” everybody else, including the Custodian and the Slug, says at once. The Number Man retreats to his office, grumbling about how arithmetic isn’t mathematics.

*

Now that we have jerked ourselves off over how special and amazing and powerful our protagonist is, let us return to Brockton Bay, the only city on all of Earth Bet. Taylor has just coincidentally happened to stumble across Lung, who is ordering his men to shoot some motherfucking children.

This is interesting. Some children deserve to be killed, of course, but Lung has given no indication that his juvenile targets are attempting to undermine the revolution from within by, say, requiring food to live or being Ukrainian in 1932. It is unlikely the children are acceptable targets for a revolutionary struggle.

But even if the children in question are Trotskyists, Taylor will still intervene on their behalf. Simply put, Lung has already earned her enmity. Everyone on the entire Eastern seaboard knows the three things that are most important about Lung, and those three things are reason enough for her to attack him on sight.

First: he turns into a dragon, which is why he calls himself Lung. The correct way to romanize the ancient Mandarin word for “dragon” is, of course, lóng. Now, Taylor is aware that some people claim that “lung” and “lóng” are essentially equivalent, but this is revisionist nonsense. “Lung” is romanized according to a system made by and for imperialists. On the other hand, “lóng” is pinyin, a romanization system developed by Communist intellectuals after Liberation and adopted under Chairman Mao as part of a literacy program. Refusing to use pinyin may have been de rigueur for reactionaries in the 1960s, but this is 2011 and Taylor is not a reactionary.

Second: Lung follows bushido, and this is clearly evident in how he’s a barely literate brute of a gangster who murders children for funsies. Some people might admire this self-indulgent throwback to feudalism, but Taylor knows better. “Bushido” was the code under which the Imperial Japanese Army attempted to exterminate Maoism. And anyway, isn’t that whole exploitative pan-Asian gang thing a little too like the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere for comfort?

Third: Lung has hundreds of sex slaves on a farm. There is only one use for a farm in Taylor’s world, and that is to produce trillions of catties of grain via agriculture mechanized according to the Lei Feng spirit. Sex slaves do not factor in at any step of the process.

With all this in mind, Taylor brandishes her ice pick and walks openly down the middle of the street towards Lung and his goons.

The men stare at her as she approaches, clearly evaluating her with all the attentiveness and critical thinking ability of a fully-grown fanfiction author who sweatily considers fifteen-year-old girls in terms of measurements.

“This one is not good for the farm,” Lung pronounces when she stops less than a foot in front of him. “She looks too strong and progressive.”

“Women hold up half the sky, you putschist fuck,” Taylor agrees, and turns into a tank.

One of the foundational truths of reality is that tanks on top of people kill, which is why they were so useful in Hungary that one time. Once he goes beneath her treads, she reverses and pulls forward again a few times until she’s satisfied she’s done Ivan Konev proud.

Unfortunately, Lung is like the Wade-Giles System: he just won’t die.

Fortunately, neither will the revolutionary spirit. Taylor makes more tanks, Lung grows his own armor, and the battle is on.

*

Eventually, Taylor withdraws to her own body while her tanks continue to spawn and fight. She climbs up the side of a building and observes her handiwork. It is more or less a draw: Taylor’s tanks can’t do any damage, but there isn’t enough of a challenge in the tanks to provoke Lung into growing further. The only casualties are his goons, whom she runs over like they’re mourning Hu Yaobang in public, and neighborhood property values. But property is theft, so that’s okay.

A group of teenagers happen by and introduce themselves to her so they can thank her for saving them. They seem pretty bougie and at least one kind of Liberal, but they aren’t as bad as a feudalist drug-runner who forces other people to use reactionary spelling, and Tattletale has green eyes that remind Taylor of a fox’s besides.

For a while, they stare at the battle. Things are more or less contained until the Protectorate arrives in the form of an irritated man on a motorcycle. This is more than enough reason for Bitch, Regent, and Grue to skedaddle, but Tattletale lingers for some reason.

Lung throws some tanks and Armsmaster. Taylor dismisses the tanks before they can crash into a wall, but she can’t really do anything about Armsmaster. At least he has armor, a dress code she can approve of, even if his comes in the wrong color.

“Doesn’t he ever get bored?” Taylor asks, gesturing at Lung, who is now throwing melting tanks at Armsmaster. Taylor makes more. A building falls over.

“No,” Tattletale says.

Taylor thinks about this. “The forces of counterrevolution never tire,” she says at last.

“Er, all right,” Tattletale says.

“Not all right,” Taylor says. She meets Tattletale’s vulpine gaze and holds it for longer than socially awkward or/and socially adroit but heterosexual people would find comfortable. “All _left_.”


	3. Political Power Blooms From the Barrel of A Gun

Thesis: Taylor is alone, thanks to her bourgeoisie friend's betrayal.

Antithesis: Taylor's life philosophy is based on everyone working together.

Synthesis: Taylor has joined the Undersiders so they can rob a bank together.

Physically, she could do this herself and rob every other bank in the city simultaneously, but philosophically...well, it is not good that the revolutionary should be alone.

That is why, when Tattletale waves her handgun and gleefully shouts “This is a stickup! Don’t panic or you’ll die!” Taylor does not get annoyed.

Instead, she pops out of the turret of one of her tanks and waves her ice pick. “This is the first stage of the revolution, marked by the forcible redistribution of wealth from wealthy people to the revolutionaries!” she cries. “Don’t worry, you can trust us.”

The other Undersiders roll their eyes but head off into the vault.

Taylor is satisfied that they accepted her authority as leader of the revolution. “If you are a kulak, come over here. Everyone else, be grateful the vanguard has arrived.”

“What is a kulak?” demands an angry, freckled Panacea. She’d know if she spent more Thursdays at school instead of the bank.

Taylor sighs. “If your household ‘earns’ more than $150,000 per annum or if you know what ‘per annum’ means, please form an orderly line in front of this tank.”

“But wait, if you’re using the phrase, don’t you know what--”

Taylor runs over Amy.

The hostages panic.

It is evident from their panic that they are all kulaks, so Taylor runs over all of them.

Regrettable, but you can’t make an omelette without brutally murdering everyone who dislikes eggs.

By the time the other Undersiders emerge from the vault with loot, there is little evidence to suggest that hostages were ever there; Taylor banished the bloodstained tanks because kulak bits were gumming up the treads. She explains this to Lisa, who seems unhappy with her decision.

Before Taylor can explain why revolutionary terror is the only way, Brian points out that the absence of witnesses means that nobody will be able to link the Undersiders to Taylor’s justified and more or less literal liquidation of class enemies. So far as the Protectorate will be concerned, only one cape--a tank replicator--committed the robbery.

Each Undersider jumps into a different tank and Taylor prepares to handle their escape. No sooner has she sealed herself in her own tank than she is interrupted by Glory Girl smashing through the roof. Some people, Taylor reflects, as she drives over the shattered, blood-flecked remains of the bank’s floor and furniture, are just so blase about collateral damage. 

Judging by her angry shouting _what the fuck did you do to my sister_ and _my god you didn’t even leave a body you sick freak_ , Glory Girl also seems to be unhappy about Taylor’s bite-sized demonstration of counter-counterrevolutionary measures.

Taylor ignores her. She can tank whatever Glory Girl can dish out, and in the meantime she has an escape to focus on. The plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity: she will shield her team’s retreat by generating hundreds of tanks and directing them to swarm all over Brockton Bay. Trying to find the tanks that hold the Undersiders will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, or a Maoist guerrilla hidden in the people’s bosom of Northeast China, or an atom of philosophical correctness in a Trotskyist.

Her tanks flow over and through the various Wards. As Clockblocker freezes tanks on top of himself, as Aegis peels himself off the pavement, as Vista pinches space like a corporate stooge pinches pennies, as Taylor blasts Kid Win and his self-indulgent hoverboard out of the sky--as all this happens, Taylor cannot help but be overwhelmed with affection for her power, which allows her to sweep all before it as Stalin’s soldiers swept Hitler’s invading forces back to Berlin.

Her armored battalions are magnificent. They are the ones that forge the way forward; the rest follow in their wake. They are of course just as equal as the rest, just a little more. And just as tanks are the leading element in attacking armies by virtue of their speed and strength, Taylor is the leading element of the revolution by virtue of her abilities.

She has no choice but to be at the forefront, no choice but to lead. The sacrifice of others is nothing compared to what she has given up. Her individuality is gone, and she just a vehicle for communism and her working brothers and sisters. Glory Girl could stand to learn a thing or two about true sisterhood from her example.

When she returns to the Undersiders’ hideout, she is greeted by an almost cozy scene. Rachel is sleeping in a dog pile, Lisa is perched on the couch texting, and Brian is watching Alec play video games. Here are four youthful revolutionaries enjoying themselves after a long hard day of wealth redistribution, and here is something approaching true community.

Alec notices her staring. “You play?”

“Video games are the opium of the masses,” Taylor tells him.

“Yeah, that’s the point,” he says. “Wanna kill Nazis or not?”

This is a stupid question. She’d rather kill real Nazis, but the laws of the universe physically prevent her from even thinking about her hometown’s Nazi infestation until after the ABB have been permanently neutralized.

For now, she settles in between Lisa and Alec. “Always,” Taylor says, and reaches for a controller.


	4. Chapter Four: Revolution Is Not A Dinner Party

Victoria wishes she could say that the fortnight after her sister dies passes in a blur, but the fact is she remembers each individual moment of anguish. She gets through them all by anchoring herself using three conversations, conversations that will determine her future path.

The first takes place in her parents’ living room after the bank robbery. She flies home to tell her parents what happened to Amy, but when she arrives, her father is flopping around on the floor like a salmon dying of crushing existential apathy. It’s been one of those years, so she tells her mother instead.

“Good,” Carol says brusquely. She opens the oven door. “She was always evil. I’m so glad we had this talk about our feelings and you agree with me. Meatloaf?”

Victoria flies off to join the Wards.

Armsmaster arranges the second for her. Lung has actually seen the tank replicator, which no one else who’s still alive has, and Armsmaster lets her talk to him through his cell’s intercom. Victoria gathers that her nemesis is a teenager (“the perfect age for my farm of hundreds of sex slaves, but—”). More relevantly, Lung provides some insight into how her enemy thinks.

Namely, she is a Communist.

With that revelation in mind, there’s only one person she can have that third conversation with.

“Your parents have advised me that they will sue you if you use the Glory Girl identity,” Miss Militia says. “Apparently the name and image are copyrighted to New Wave, and since you aren’t a part of New Wave anymore . . .”

“They’d sue me over the name?”

“Your mother would. I’m given to understand your father is too busy wallowing in ennui to care about bathing, let alone intellectual property.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Victoria frowns; it would do no good to start her vendetta against an unAmerican Communist supervillain by violating another group’s property rights, even if the other group was enforcing their rights just to be petty.

So Lady Liberty makes her debut at a Protectorate banquet to celebrate the successful arrest of Lung. Victoria’s new costume is black with gold and red accents--very “101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)” meets “Darker and Edgier.” She feels very adult as she enters the room on Dean’s arm.

Frankly, the celebration is premature. Lung might be in prison, but Bakuda and Oni Lee are not, the Empire Eighty-Eight has not been disrupted in recent memory, and no villainous truce needs to be overshadowed. Indeed, it is hard to see why this banquet is taking place at all.

It is even more difficult to see why New Wave has shown up, since they had no role in defeating Lung. Victoria suspects they are only there so her mother can berate her, and that is exactly what happens.

Carol immediately interrupts Victoria’s conversation with Dean to explain Victoria’s own feelings to her. She peevishly monologues for ten minutes and concludes by saying “you already agree with me about Amy, you just need to admit that and come home.”

“I’ll get us some punch,” Dean says into the awkward silence, and heads off to the buffet tables.

“The meatloaf is cold,” Carol says.

An explosion spares her from having to answer her maternal parental unit, but it does not spare the wall from getting blown inwards or spare Dean from getting his lower half blown off.

Bakuda steps through the hole in the wall. “Frankly,” she says through her gas mask, “this celebration is premature.”

She says more, a lot more, mostly about her intrinsic superiority and how grade deflation at the more insecure of the non-Harvard Ivies is just some bullshit, you guys, I mean really, but Victoria flies to Dean’s upper half. “Dean!”

“Ugh,” says Dean, “I think they spiked the punch.”

She looks down and wishes, now selfishly, that Amy weren’t dead.

“It really knocked my socks off.”

It’s not a problem. He’s babbling, he’s in shock, Amy is dead, but it’s not a problem. _Not a problem._ Victoria runs to collect Dean’s legs so she can stuff them in a refrigerator before the paramedics arrive. Maybe they can save—

A tank crashes through the ceiling and lands on him. Nobody else, just him.

“Oh, come _on_!” Victoria exclaims, waving her arms and her dead boyfriend’s legs in frustration.

The hatch pops open and a skinny teenager in ugly clothes pops out. “Greetings, capitalist pigs,” she says with a sneer. “I come in precisely as much peace as you deserve.”

Victoria has no time for this class struggle nonsense. “You killed my boyfriend!”

“Wasn’t that your sister?” The tank cape’s confusion hardens into contempt. “Degenerate.”

“What? No!”

“Hey, jackasses!” Bakuda snaps. “I'm monologuing here!”

The tank cape rolls her eyes, pops back down into the tank, and closes the hatch behind her. A few moments later, the tank moves towards and over Bakuda.

“You _lunatic_!” Battery screams. “She had a dead man’s switch! Killing her just set off every bomb she made! You just killed hundreds if not thousands of people and unleashed God knows how many unchecked superpowered effects on—”

“Nobody told me that,” the tank cape says, a little petulantly.

“It was the first thing she said when she came in! She announced she effectively had hundreds of hostages! Hostages,” Battery snarls through barred teeth, “That you just killed. By, I repeat, the hundreds.”

“Nobody told _me_ that,” Tank Girl repeats.

“Horseshit,” Victoria proclaims. “A contingency plan to kill a bunch of people if they’re thwarted is Villain 101. No villain just shows up at a gathering of all the heroes without hostages. Right?”

Tank Girl looks shifty-eyed.

“ _Right?_ ” Victoria says, pointedly.

The Communist points to the soupy puddle of Dean residue. “One death is a tragedy.” She makes a sweeping gesture with her arm, encompassing the city and indicating the hundreds of detonations presumably taking place. “A million is a statistic.”

Victoria hurls Dean’s legs at the tank girl, but she ducks into her hatch and they just bounce off the turret. She pops back up again. “Anyway, I’m here to overthrow the class system, starting with the running dogs who drink champagne in galleries while the boat graveyard rusts along with the dreams of the working class.”

She would probably talk more—communist philosophers just go on and on and fucking _on_ —but Victoria slams into the tank at eighty miles an hour. The tank is driven back through the window and the two begin to fall as Victoria tears armor off to get at the cape inside.

“I was going to liberate them!” Tank Girl screams, frantically spawning tanks to break her fall. “Knocking me out of a window to pursue a personal vendetta is pure selfishness!”

“Selfishness is morally good!” Victoria retorts.

“Enlightened self-interest? Ha! How does it feel, knowing your ideology hasn’t been respected in academic circles since the 1840s?!”

“When the fuck do you think Marx wrote!?”

“Why the fuck do you think I said the 1840s!?”

“You know what capitalism is good for? Decent clothes!”

The dismembered tank containing her nemesis finally hits the ground, and her nemesis struggles to her feat. “If slave labor falls within the realm of decency, then sure!”

“My costume is 100% American-made!”

“Yeah,” Tank Girl shouts. “By prisoners, who are legally permitted to be slaves under the thirteenth amendment to your pathetic ‘Constitution’!”

Victoria pulls up short. “What?”

“Yep!” Tank Girl begins to fire her weapons at Victoria, who has to dodge because of her shield’s recharge time. “Let me just drive this symbol of workers’ solidarity through the giant loophole in your exploitative liberal system and over your revisionist head.”

“Yeah, well,” Victoria says, flying to get out of the way of the tank fire as she scrabbles to find mental purchase. “Remember that every time Marxism is implemented in real life, millions die. Ukraine, the Gulags, the Great Leap Forward, the Killing Fields—can you deny that?”

“I don’t deny any of it,” Tank Girl says as she turns to leave. “Everyone who died deserved it.”

“Even the babies?”

Tank Girl gives her one last long look, and a fierce, fiery determination fueled by the collective spirit of the united workers of the world blazes in her eyes. “ _Especially_ the babies.”


	5. War Can Only Be Abolished Through War

Taylor’s disruption of the Protectorate’s vainglorious banquet is an unmitigated success. It is very good for Brockton Bay that she is here to smash symbols of consumerist culture and liberal institutions. The hundreds of people-borne bombs going off all over the city are less good for Brockton Bay, but the path of revolution is not smooth or without hardship.

As chaos reigns, Taylor makes her way to the rendezvous point and meets up with Tattletale and the other Undersiders. They all get in a van (Tattletale says it would be a limousine, but their employer wishes to respect Taylor’s scruples) and travel to their secret boss’s secret underground lair.

“Undersiders, Undersiders, Undersiders,” the secret boss says, and sweeps down the metal staircase in his secret underground lair and throws his arms wide. “I am Coil. Welcome to my base of operations and to my official employment. Bitch, I will take care of all the dogs in the city. Grue, I will give you your sister. Regent, I will give you the opportunity to stick it to your dad, who is a major asshole.”

He turns to Taylor. “And miss—”

“Comrade,” Taylor corrects. “Or Taylor Hebert. I am not going to merchandize, so there is no reason for me to hide behind a ‘cape’ name.”

“Quite. Well, _you_ , my dear,” Coil says, leaning forward and somehow managing to leer through his body suit, “have just handed me this city on a platter. Now that you have set off all of Bakuda’s bombs, I will be able to oust Emily Piggot for incompetence. You may ask me for anything you like.”

“I want the rich dead, their immorally attained largess distributed to the masses, and a dictatorship of the proletariat to lead the world into a paradise on earth where human potential is maximized.”

“Well, I’m certainly doing parts of that,” Coil says. “I use my power to take money from the rich and give it to the me so that a dictatorship of the me can rule an otherwise unchanged society.”

Taylor decides to allow this. It is basically how the USSR worked, after all. “It’s a start,” she says cautiously.

Coil claps his hands together. “Excellent!” he exclaims. “I look forward to working with you.”

“Can I ask what your power is?” Grue says.

Coil tents his fingers. “I could answer that in words, but I prefer to speak in deeds. Do you have a quarter? Any coin will do, but I’m much better at flipping quarters than I am dimes.”

This is ridiculous. If Taylor had any money, she’d use it to fund advancements in the field of agricultural mechanization, not give it to her boss.

“Yeah,” Regent says, and tosses him two bits. “But give it back, I’m going to go to Dave and Buster’s later.”

“Of course,” Coil says solemnly. He turns to a strung-out middle schooler. “Pet, what is the probability of flipping this coin so it lands heads up ten times in a row if I do not use my power?”

“Zero point zero zero zero nine seven six five six two five,” the poor kid replies. “I’d like you to give me heroin now, please.”

Taylor suddenly realizes that Coil is a capitalist! She decides not to allow _any_ of this.

“Uh, Coil?” Dinah says, speaking through the fog of addiction.

“What is it, pet?”

“All the numbers just—”

“Seize the means of precognition!” Taylor screams in both timelines as she buries her ice pick in Coil’s skull.

“Um,” Lisa says.

“Dude! You got pia mater on my quarter. What the _fuck_ , man.”

The Travelers, who (with the exception of Oliver and Noelle) have been standing there the entire time, all issue similarly angry exclamations.

Taylor instantly surrounds herself in the hard protective shell of the thirty-two and a half foot long, 51 ton IS-2 Model 1944, accidentally crushing Genesis and Ballistic in the process.

“Right,” Trickster says. “I’m going to go get Noelle.” Sundancer runs after him, begging him to do anything but that.

Taylor opens the hatch and addresses the means of precognition. “Opiates are the opium of the masses,” she says softly. She reaches her hand out to Dinah. “You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

Dinah takes her hand and Taylor hauls her into the tank.

This touching moment is disrupted by a very angry Noelle Meinhardt bursting out of her vault and into the open area the others are standing.

“You asshole,” she and her angry dog heads snarl. “He was helping me.”

Taylor curses herself for not having foreseen such an obvious trap. The biggest obstacle to revolution is not the droplet of true capitalists, but the ocean of working class people whom they have manipulated into fighting each other. This angry meat monster girl needs to be reeducated so she can join the revolution.

Noelle is not interested in listening to an explanation of the Hegelian dialectic as it applies to revolutionary studies. She charges.

Taylor dispels the tank she is currently in, seizes both Tattletale and Dinah, and turns into a tank. Noelle absorbs Taylor, but as Taylor is currently nearly forty tons of steel and not one hundred forty pounds of human, she cannot be cloned. Nor can the two girls shielded from Noelle by the cold embrace of Taylor's armored walls, sheltering her gestating revolutionaries.

“Taylor, I hope you can hear me, because killing Coil triggered the base’s self-destruct countdown,” Lisa says. “We need to get out of here before it blows.”

“On it, comrade,” Taylor says, and really cuts loose.

The T-80 Main Battle Tank, designed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by Nikolay Popov on behalf of the masses, is one of the greatest engineering feats of all time because it uses gas turbines and not opposite piston diesel engines. There is also absolutely no way it can be confused for the T-72.

Somewhat more relevantly, the T-80 has an autoloader that allows its 2A46M-1 gun to fire seven rounds a minute, and each of her tank spawns with twenty-eight rounds. Taylor summons fifty of them and lets them fire for four minutes.

The shocking, awful display of firepower allows them to break free and escape just in the nick of time; what’s currently left of Noelle is buried beneath the ensuing rubble.

The Protectorate response is headed by Miss Militia, who throws her cowboy hat on the ground in the anger and frustration all capitalist running dogs feel when confronted by the authoritative praxis inherent in any display of the people’s firepower. “What in tarnation is going on here?”

“An S Class threat is loose in your city,” Tattletale announces. “That is S Class. I say again: S Class. Not A Class. S Class. As in Serious.”

“We need authorization from higher to do that,” Miss Militia says, and facetimes Chief Director Costa-Brown on her PRT-issued whyPhone.

Taylor frowns at the product placement. Tattletale frowns at the Chief Director’s insistence on calling Noelle an A Class threat, and twists Miss Militia’s hand so the phone’s camera is facing her. “You’re wrong. Noelle is a high-level duplicator and if she gets her hands on a tinker, she can create an epidemic situation.”

Chief Director Costa-Brown doesn’t even bother looking up from the nail she’s filing.

“Nah,” she says. “Siri, hang up.”

Tattletale presses her palms to the sides of her head. “What?”

And then the Endbringer sirens go off.


	6. Talking Nonsense Solves No Problems

Although Brockton Bay is still partly standing after Leviathan’s retreat and Echidna’s death, the battle goes down as one of the great defeats alongside Newfoundland, Moscow, and Kyushu. The combination of Leviathan and an infestation of evil superpowered clones was simply too much for the combined defenses to handle well.

Scion arrived too late to contain Cauldron’s secrets, and the Protectorate and PRT are still reeling from the blow. Worse—as far as Brockton Bay is concerned—Amy’s death prevented several heroes from being healed, and many of the wounded died or became disabled. Shadow Stalker and Clockblocker joined Gallant in death, and Battery shot her husband twice in the head, under the mistaken impression he was a clone. In her defense, this is because he was behaving very badly.

Taylor does not care about the PRT’s internal struggles, and neither do the eight members of the Slaughterhouse Nine who make their way into the city in two semi trucks (and, not far behind, a white van). She doesn’t care because she believes all existing social structures are exploitative and unjust; the Nine don’t care because they delight in the corruption and destruction of all existing social structures.

Indeed, our heroine (for she is a heroine, regardless of how the capitalist lackeys of the PRT see fit describe her) is just happy to put the whole affair behind her. She got overconfident—not normally one of her faults, as she is but the latest in a long line of successful intellectuals who set out to achieve realistic goals via sound and sensible means—and got snagged by Echidna.

By the time Taylor managed to escape, Noelle had already released a clone: a pantsuit-wearing, train-spawning Objectivist. Say what you will about Stalin, people at least take him _seriously_. This was not the case for the scraggly teenager unaccountably screaming at heroes about the virtues of art deco in the middle of a full-on battle for the survival of their community.

Objectivaylor, displaying a capacity for observation that far outstripped any found in a naturally occurring objectivist, noticed that nobody was paying her any heed. Instead of making her self-aware enough to ask why that might be, this fact made her angry. So she crushed Browbeat, stole his armband, and began to recite, using the priority message button, the entirety of John Galt’s radio broadcast from the third part of _Atlas Shrugged_.

It took the assembled capes a moment to realize what they were listening to as nobody had ever actually read it. This included Taylor, which rendered the clone’s source of knowledge an unsolved mystery and, in Taylor’s opinion, pointed to a malicious intelligence behind all superpowers. Dragon, the only one present who had access to Google, was the first to figure it out and quickly shut her down, but by that point everyone else was so irritated that she became public enemy number one. Alexandria had to take time away from fighting Leviathan to dispatch her.

Taylor had to watch, mortified, as her childhood hero's first impression of her was set by a skyscraper fetishist. The disgusted curl of Alexandria’s lip seems to sear into Taylor’s mind as indelibly as if _her_ memories were offloaded to _her_ shard.

Thankfully, this embarrassment did not endure for long. Echidna outed Alexandria as Chief Director Costa-Brown, and so Taylor was spared from having to be self-conscious about any pains such a corrupt capitalist stooge undertook because of her. In the weeks between the incident and the moment that Crawler knocks on her father’s door, Taylor has effectively airbrushed her humiliation from memory.

Danny Hebert is not particularly thrilled when he opens the door to see a gigantic monster waiting for him. Crawler’s weight has splintered his front porch and the green acid dripping from his mouth is dissolving the foundation of the Heberts’ home. This is a metaphor, but not one that’s very well-drawn or relevant.

Danny is significantly more irritated about the property destruction than he is by the sudden appearance of the Slaughterhouse Nine on his literal, albeit shattered, doorstep. He bought a lot of cheap vodka this month instead of paying for his homeowner’s insurance policy. (He didn’t do this because he is an alcoholic; he did this because Taylor has lately refused to eat or drink anything that is not potato-derived, out of solidarity with the peasantry.)

“Good evening,” Crawler says. “Is Comrade Taylor Hebert at home? I wish to do battle with her.”

“And why do you want to do that?” Danny demands, his long-unused paternal instincts suddenly flaring to life. “You aren’t one of the _bullies_ , are you?”

Ned is utterly bemused by this; it’s true that he changes regularly (and that he likes the change), but he feels that people should recognize him.

“Tell her I’m, uh . . .” He pauses to think about what Cherish had told him would set her off. “A capitalist stooge.”

“You don’t look like a capitalist stooge,” Taylor interrupts from behind Danny. “Are you even a real landlord?”

“I’m in the _Slaughterhouse Nine_ ,” he snaps.

“So you don’t own any property,” Taylor says slowly.

Crawler senses he has misstepped. “Not as such, no.”

“So you are not unjustly denying laborers control over the means of production.”

“I don’t know what ‘the means of production’ means, to be honest,” Crawler says. “I just want to fight you.”

Taylor isn’t interested in doing battle with Crawler at all, and she doesn’t understand his motivations. Her eyes narrow in suspicion. “Have you done anything to level the classes?”

Finally, a question he can answer in the affirmative! “Well, me and the Siberian leveled an entire elementary school three weeks ago.”

Taylor does the math. Assuming a standard-sized K through 6 school with two groups of students per grade, Crawler and Siberian leveled a total of fourteen classes to the ground. “Was there a preschool?”

Crawler nods his Prius-sized head.

Taylor nods her teenage-girl sized head. Another two to four classes, with the extirpation of the toddlers being justified by the fact anyone who can afford to send their children to pre-school is ipso facto bougie. “Sixteen classes leveled, then. I find that you are a worthy ally, not an opponent.”

“I don’t understand. Why can’t we just fight? It’s so much simpler.”

“ _Well_ ,” Taylor says, and yanks her copy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_ out of her ginormous and convenient cargo pocket. “I’m _so_ happy for the opportunity to explain politics to you.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Jack Slash says, rolling up in a truck with Cherish in tow. “I did explain Miss Hebert’s perspective to you, Ned, did I not? It’s like I always say—”

Crawler yawns at the mere thought of listening to one of Jack’s philosophical speeches. More acid slides out of his mouth, and since he is so tall, the acid all lands on Danny, dissolving him in goo. Unfortunately for Danny, he doesn’t have a creepy brother to “save” him by turning him into a mind-controlled flesh monster and he dies unceremoniously, with a lot of screaming.

Taylor is unfazed by this grisly occurrence. Homicide is a common reaction to being introduced to Hegel, and resistance is only natural. It must, of course, be overcome, and she sets about explaining dialectics in increasingly convoluted ways.

Crawler waves four of his limbs in frustration. “I just killed your dad! Doesn’t that make you mad enough to fight?”

“It is correct for the old to sacrifice themselves for the young,” she said, echoing Mao’s repudiation of feudalistic Confucian values. Before she can elaborate, a flying figure interrupts them.

“You shouldn’t have given up your real name, _Comrade_. You’re under arrest,” crows Victoria Dallon, the onetime Glory Girl and current Lady Liberty. She deposits Miss Militia on the ground, and the heroine aims one shotgun at Crawler and one shotgun at Taylor.

“I won’t say no to a bit of revolutionary terror,” Taylor says, “but I don’t understand why everyone wants to fight when I, like the people’s spirit, am invincible.”

“Aha!” shouts another voice from the heavens. “Prepare to be cleansed, untermenschen.”

It’s someone who looks like Victoria, only decked out in the black, red, and white of the Third Reich or/and the Empire Eighty-Eight. Her vocal chords were mangled while Victoria was in Noelle, and she’s ended up with an accent like a movie villain from the 1980s, back from when Americans understood Nazis were bad.

“I,” the escaped Echidna clone announces, “am Lebensraum Lass.”

“Oh,” Lady Liberty says. “Oh, no. Oh _hell_ no.”

“I just think we all need to calm down,” another Victoria clone says. She’s arrived in the wake of Lebensraum Lass and her robe is identical to that of the Nazi, but it has pink and gray to complement its white instead of red and black.

“Wait a second,” Miss Militia says, looking from the Nazi to the centrist and back.

Sister Centrist’s calming aura sweeps over them, and the Overton Window is shifted nearly imperceptibly to the right. “All points of view are equally valuable and all people are equally educated and capable of discerning truth and falsehood for themselves, so why we should we artificially stifle the free marketplace of ideas?”

This galvanizes Taylor’s will to fight. “My point of view is that we should put ice picks in the heads of anyone who has her point of view,” she announces.

“ _Finally_ ,” Crawler exclaims, happy to have understood something.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Sister Centrist says, holding up a hand. “I really mean that everyone _else_ ’s viewpoint is equally valuable. _Yours_ is not. You sound like a fascist, and that’s just terrible.”

“I am literally a fascist,” Lebensraum Lass says perkily.

“Yeah, but, like, you’re okay.” Sister Centrist frowns. “I don’t know why, but that’s just how things are.”

Lady Liberty turns to Taylor. “Friends?”

“Comrades,” Taylor confirms, and she transforms.


	7. Do You Doubt This Conclusion? Facts Will Force You To Accept It!

_Should the foe penetrate_  
_Every gunner lies in wait_  
_And those caissons go rolling along_  
_Fire at will, lay ’em low_  
_Never stop for any foe_  
_While those caissons go rolling along_

____

There are few things in this world that can solve problems as efficaciously and as satisfyingly as heavy armor. If you want something done right, do it with diesel, treads, steel, and shells; this is a maxim that can serve anyone equally well in all circumstances, whether it's telling your orthodontist you can't make it to your appointment or removing a city's white supremacist infestation.

____

____

As the pitched three-way battle unfolds, Taylor implements the strategies refined by Mao's guerillas over twenty years and destroys her enemy cape by cape, mouthful by mouthful. Her first target is Stormtiger, who releases several blasts of condensed air at the nearest tank, ripping into it to get to what he presumes will be the meaty controller at the center.

____

____

He is mistaken, for Taylor's consciousness is spread across all her tanks as class consciousness is spread throughout the properly educated masses.

____

____

When Stormtiger emerges from the other side, clearly confused, Taylor fires off a single round from another tank. He has the ability to dodge mere bullets, of course, but there is something about having his face exploded by a 43.2 pound shell moving at 5,905 feet per second that puts a damper on the old corona gemma.

____

____

Taylor smirks. Loser shoulda called himself _paper_ tiger.

____

____

He's not the only one; _all_ allegedly powerful reactionaries are paper tigers. Like Jiang Jieshi's forces, Alabaster's regeneration is impressive enough on paper; also like Jiang Jieshi's forces, his heart collapses immediately on facing the slightest bit of resistance (in this case, 45.7 tons of metal and proletariat engineering materializing on top of him).

____

____

Rune drops the Heberts' living room on five tanks at once, which would have made a difference if Taylor only had five tanks at her disposal. Taylor spawns twenty-five more, just to prove a point. Realizing she has picked a strategy roughly as effective as invading the Soviet Union, Rune grabs Cricket and hastily scrambles aboard a tank she then levitates to get them out of harm's way.

____

____

Unfortunately for fascists everywhere, she has made the classic mistake of the capitalist. That is to say, Rune has attempted to use something that rightfully belongs to the people in order to artificially lift herself and her cronies above the people. A more apt metaphor could not be drawn, even in the cleverest of fiction.

____

____

Taylor decisively counters Rune's delusion by waiting until they've risen high enough and canceling out the tanks.

____

____

They fall, and with a couple of soft thuds Brockton Bay is down two more Nazis. Taylor traps more of her city's enemies within the walls of her own tanks, caringly using her own metal bodies to keep their attacks contained.

____

____

For some reason, Kaiser and Victoria are standing in the midst of a poisonous fog arguing with each other about whether white nationalism is actually bad for America.

____

____

"None of this would be happening now if J—globalist influence hadn't conned Churchill and Roosevelt into interfering in the assimilation of Europe into the Reich," Kaiser says as serenely as though he's discussing Tuscan scenery. Behind him, Siberian rips a six story tall Menja in half, and the giantess flattens large swathes of the surrounding suburban landscape as she falls.

____

____

Victoria dodges a dozen spikes punching out of the ground, unsure of how to respond to something so ridiculous.

____

____

Mannequin purifies the discourse by vacuuming up Fog's fog and trapping it within his arm, where his filtration systems neutralize it. In cleaning up the world in this small way, Mannequin demonstrates that Alan Gramme's desire to improve society lingers even in his demented alter ego.

____

____

Victoria's thought process abruptly clears. "Revisionist horseshit," she snaps. You're leaving out all the white Europeans who didn't capitulate. The French who didn't turn Vichy, the Dutch resistance, the Russians, everyone—just— _you forgot Poland!"_

____

____

“Poles!” Kaiser spits. “They’re terrible! They name their children things like Kielbasa and Pestilence. The Hunger Plan was necessary to prevent their poor taste in appellatives from continuing to spawn. And their spawn from continuing to breathe."

____

____

Victoria slams into him from above, knocking him off his high horse and into the ground. “What is it with you assholes and starving babies to death?”

____

____

“Only the ethnically impure ones," Lebensraum Lass says at the same time as Taylor says, "Only the ideologically impure ones."

____

____

Sister Centrist breaks out her finger guns. “Both sides,” she says.

____

____

"Speaking of which," Kaiser says, smoothly rising to his feet and focusing again on Victoria, "You and I are on the same side."

____

____

"Um," Victoria says. "No, we are fucking not."

____

____

He gestures at Lebensraum Lass, who is throwing tanks at other tanks instead of paying attention to the fact Burnscar has set everything on fire. "We are the only group in this city that recognizes and respects your _true_ value to this world. I believe the fact Menja and your sister here participate enthusiastically in our cause nicely brings that point home."

____

____

Lady Liberty snaps one of Kaiser's beams in half and throws it at his head. "And what, _exactly_ , is the value that you think I have?"

____

____

"Everything important about you." Kaiser is by this point breathing a little heavily, even for someone who's wandering around in full-plate armor. "I know the beauty of the white woman must not perish from the earth."

____

____

"What," Victoria says.

____

____

Jack stabs Kaiser in the brain via the eye-slit in his visor.

____

____

Victoria shoots Jack a glance. "Hey, thanks."

____

____

Jack shrugs, skewers Crusader mid-flight. "He was boring."

____

____

"You have a point," Victoria admits, then turns her attention to Purity, who is fluttering about in the sky, unsure about what to do since there are no civilian reporters or unpowered yet brown gangsters to murder. "And _you_! You hung out with this guy? On purpose?"

____

____

Purity shrugs helplessly, as though her membership in the Empire Eighty-Eight, being Kaiser’s consort twice over, and gleeful participation in the subversion of the American government by Gesellschaft were the result of an inevitable fate and not personal, freely made choices. “I must secure the existence of this city and a future for my child.”

____

____

Bitch's dogs and Hookwolf abruptly abandon their fight against Crawler and gather around Purity, thumping their monstrous bone and meat (or/and metal and hook) tails on the ground in obvious anticipation.

____

____

Crawler waves four of his limbs in frustration. All he wanted to do was fight, and nobody will assist him in this quest. As he roars his displeasure to the heavens, he unleashes a volley of acid that engulfs and liquefies Hookwolf, a nearby F150, and the tank Taylor had been using to contain Night and Shatterbird.

____

____

Nobody notices (except for Jack, who facepalms); the dogs are more interesting. The battle temporarily halts as the combatants stare at the dogs staring at Purity.

____

____

"These canines are acting in a manner inconsistent with their usual behavior," the dispassionate Armsmaster detachedly observes in a clinical way. "What could have prompted this deviation?"

____

____

“I dunno,” Bitch says. “I guess they heard something.”

____

____

Taylor sticks her icepick under one arm so she can count on her fingers as she replays Purity’s sentence in her mind. “Ah,” she says. “I see.”

____

____

“What?” Purity cries. “What do you see? I didn’t say anything.”

____

____

"I see you're a fucking Nazi," Miss Militia says, fresh from neutralizing Burnscar. She aims an M1903 Springfield at Purity's face. There are arguably better weapons to use, but Hannah feels this one is most appropriate under the circumstances.

____

____

Sister Centrist throws herself between Miss Militia and Purity, arms spread as though she is a guardian angel or Christ on the cross. "Stop throwing accusations around like that,” she decrees. “Nazi is a _serious_ word, and you can’t just pull Godwin’s Law on everyone you disagree with and expect anybody to take you seriously.”

____

____

“She runs an organization called _Empire Heil Hitler_ ," Lady Liberty says, running her hands through her hair in exasperation. "How can you not see—are you only pretending to be this stupid—"

____

____

Taylor rolls her eyes. Yammering about idealism and metaphysics is the easiest things in the world because yammerers never have to test themselves against reality. The only way to win an argument with a fascist is through praxis, a Greek word meaning “flattening them with tanks," and it is in this kind of dialogue that she immediately engages with Othala, who reacts too slowly to grant her husband invincibility.

____

____

This is too much for Cherish, who identifies Taylor as the primary threat to her way of life and floods the young revolutionary's nervous system with heartache, despair, and the overwhelming desire to give up, to accept society as it is, to _quit_.

____

____

But for all her insight into other people, Cherish does not comprehend them. She does not understand that Taylor has an indomitable spirit and is determined to vanquish all enemies and never to yield. No matter what the difficulties and hardships, so long as she remains, she will fight on. She is resolute, she fears no sacrifice, and she will surmount every difficulty to win victory.

____

____

Cherish has a brief moment in which she realizes that she has made a mistake, a brief moment in which she recognizes Taylor has the spirit to fight the enemy to her last drop of blood, a brief moment in which she comprehends the full extent to which Taylor is determined to stand on her own feet, before she is crushed as thoroughly as she attempted to crush Taylor's psyche.

____

____

Now that the poisonous fog and emotional confusion have dissipated, there is not much left for the Nazis to do but reveal themselves for what they are. Purity starts blasting everything in sight (including, a couple blocks away, an inconspicuous white van) simply to cause as much trouble as possible before she loses, while Lebensraum Lass seizes a machine gun from one of Taylor's tanks and opens fire on Sister Centrist.

____

____

Victoria snaps to a halt just before landing a punch on Jack Slash (conveniently for him, inconveniently for everyone who wanted him to die), horrified by the sight of herself being turned into bullet-riddled hamburger. “What did you do that for?” she demanded. “She _supported_ you!”

____

____

Lebensraum Lass turns on Lady Liberty with an evil smile. “Practice,” she says.

____

____

Unfortunately, she has tipped her hand. Miss Militia saves Lady Liberty through the careful application of yet more fire from automatic weapons, leaving Victoria and Taylor on their own.

____

____

"So you're vulnerable to machine gun fire," Taylor muses as Lebensraum Lass's bullet-riddled corpse falls to the ground. "I'll bear that in mind for later."

____

____

"So fucking typical," Lady Liberty snaps. "Using an alliance to uncover vulnerabilities instead of focusing on the fight at hand."

____

____

"The fight at hand was to wipe out the enemy, and you overcame many difficulties and hardships and demonstrated immense courage, wisdom, and initiative," Taylor says. "I am willing to educate you."

____

____

Victoria recoils. "I'm not about to join you!"

____

____

"Our social being determines our thinking," Taylor replies. "Once the correct ideas are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force that changes society and changes the world."

____

____

"Crawler's right," Jack says, downing Purity. "You guys are fucking boring. Time to kill all of you."

____

____

Taylor decides that, actually, it's time to liberate him.

____

____

Ordinarily her plans would fail, but Taylor is no ordinary person. Having been exposed to Marxist thought and witnessed Taylor's flawless implementation thereof for itself, Queen Administrator no longer has any truck with Broadcast, which is essentially unearned privilege in alien form. So, when Taylor walks up behind Jack and raises her icepick to end his whole career, her shard does not tip off Jack's shard.

____

____

Jack crumples to the ground like a Trotskyist on being confronted with scientifically grounded arguments—or like a Trotsky on being confronted with a perforated skull. Perceiving the loss of their leader, Bonesaw and Mannequin leap atop Crawler and scurry off into the retreating darkness.

____

____

And the darkness _is_ retreating. By the time Taylor has carried the day, the east is reddening. Dawn breaks, illuminating the victorious revolutionary and her ruined but liberated city.

____

____

The remainder of the Protectorate turn to her, implicitly acknowledging her leadership, looking to her for guidance on how to move forward into this new day.

____

____

"To fight is to survive," Taylor says, lifting her blood-spattered icepick. "Not to fight is to perish."

____


End file.
